To the people who have just elected me as their social secretary... You are aware of how antisocial I am, right?

🔭Our fourth observing run is due to end on November 18. However, we now expect to have a 6 month observing run in 2026–27 to begin in the late summer/early fall of 2026, with detectors participating as available observing.docs.ligo.org/plan/ ☄️🧪⚛️

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

LONDON (AP) — Buckingham Palace says King Charles III will strip Prince Andrew of remaining titles including “Andrew”, curse him to wander the Earth as “the nameless one”

In three weeks' time I'll be speaking at the Wester Ross Dark Skies Festival. The vague parallels between this and my favourite film "Local Hero" are not lost on me, and I am expecting to stand in a phone box describing, in wonder, the night sky down the phone at some point.

you better keep them glasses mr frodo

I'm not sure that asking "are you enjoying the app which allows your work emails to intrude into the rest of your life" is going to get you an unbiased sample of opinions...

I sometimes wonder if I led a happier existence before I knew the word "deliverable".

For all this talk of "artificial intelligence", Amazon still hasn't realised that if I have just bought a kettle I am probably no longer in the market for a new kettle.

The Glasgow Subway was famously in official mourning for Victoria until the 1970s, wearing black arm bands on their uniforms. Sometimes it's interesting to see how old traditions can be revived for our modern world.

I'm excited to announce that I'll be giving some talks in Wester Ross this November as part of the Wester Ross Dark Skies Festival (wrb.scot/sustainable-...)!

Career goals.

Have we considered the possibility that one of Macron’s negotiating tactics over the years has been to say “don’t tell anyone but if you do me this favour I’ll make you Prime Minister one day” and this is all working out very well for him?

Last weekend I tried to help a friend do a thing where he'd run over quite a lot of mountains in not a lot of time. I did not die in the process. But that was probably a valid option. daniel-williams.co.uk/2025/09/28/r... #Munros #RamsayRound #Scotland ⛰

I'll take "things which will ultimately not happen, but we'll spend almost a decade agonising about" for $100 please. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Unquestionably the best AI artefact I've ever encountered in real life is this calendar my mother was given this year, which, among other things, states that the first Sunday in advent should be celebrated on the Wednesday following Cyber Monday, which itself will be celebrated on a Thursday in 2025

As well as looking back at the last decade, we take a peak at some recent results with behind the scenes stories about the latest #GravitationalWave catalog with Lucy Thomas, @daniel-williams.co.uk and @michaelpuerrer.bsky.social #GW10Years #GWTC4

In 2015 I was in the right place at the right time when the first gravitational wave was detected. daniel-williams.co.uk/2025/09/14/t... #GravitationalWaves 🔭

Ten years ago the echoes of the most extreme astrophysical event ever measured shook the world. Unbeknownst to me (for a few hours at least!) it would set the path of my career for the next decade. Happy birthday GW150914_095045, and many happy returns @ligo.org.

A new mini-documentary by our colleagues at @uofgravity.bsky.social celebrating the 10th anniversary of our first detection and the progress in #GravitationalWave astronomy youtu.be/SqhFtkQ4f2c #GW10Years 🔭🧪⚛️🎢

I like Duolingo as I can learn Gaelic in a fantasy setting.

Time for a @uofgravity.bsky.social away day?

We're not quite done with the Big Gravitational-wave Summer just yet!

Genuinely one of the most exciting things to ever have an accidental front-seat for.

It's really exciting to see this detailed investigation of the loudest signal from #GWTC4 appear on the arxiv. Super-loud, super-clear signals like this allow us to probe fundamental physics in great depth, and this paper investigates this binary black hole with surgical precision.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the discovery of gravitational waves, I spoke to researchers at institutions across the world about the last decade, the most recent data, and their hopes and expectations for the decades to come. 🧪🔭 www.iflscience.com/the-unfoldin...

I got interviewed, and I am very aware of how famous and important everyone else interviewed in this piece is compared to me... #GravitationalWaves 🔭 www.iflscience.com/the-unfoldin...

I am once again getting adverts for a "new AI-powered platform for scientific research" which has called itself "scite", and continue to wonder why AI didn't realise why advertising that name to someone in Glasgow is not getting the reaction you want.

"Oh you know, just a normal black hole merger", I say, describing two unimaginably heavy and dense objects, the hearts of billion-year-dead stars, colliding at a sizable fraction of light speed, after billions of years spiralling towards each other...

The system for purchasing a flat in Scotland is the most absurd thing I have ever interacted with.

Very strange pivot for the people who always have a sale on sofas.

Maybe it would be faster if we got more than one man to cut all this steel, and stopped doing it on a boat which is clearly required for delivering things?

Didn't their grannies warn them about putting their eggs all in one basket?

I'm sad to report that Rainer (Rai) Weiss passed away yesterday at age 92. Rai developed the design for LIGO, he and Kip got it funded, trained countless researchers, and received the 2017 Nobel Prize. Rai always had time for students and treated us as equals. May his memory be a blessing

New black holes! Well, they're new to you. #physics ⚛️ 🧪

The new results we've released today contain the loudest signal we've detected so far: GW230814, louder even than the famous GW170817 neutron star merger. Read about it in the paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2508.18082

It's really exciting to see this major project reach this milestone.

Today's mood.

🎇🎆🎇🎊🎉

You know you have a good set of results when your plot fills 2 whole pages Here are the measured properties for our most significant new detections. We have a wide range of binary black holes and a couple of neutron star black hole binaries 📊 arxiv.org/abs/2508.18082 🔭🧪⚛️☄️ #GWTC4

Results from the first part of our fourth LIGO @egovirgo.bsky.social KAGRA observing run are out today! We're pleased to share the largest catalog of gravitational-wave observations with more discoveries of black holes and neutron stars 📰 arxiv.org/abs/2508.18082 🔭🧪⚛️☄️ #GWTC4

Zwaartkekrachtgolven waren eens de heilige graal. Tegenwoordig regent het zwaartekrachtgolven.

128 new mergers between black holes and neutron stars. Today we're revealing the biggest ever update to our count of gravitational wave detections. New data from May 2023 to January 2024 has more than doubled the number we've seen. 🧵 1/3 @ligo.org #Virgo #KAGRA #GravitationalWaves 🔭 #GWTC-4 #O4a

I for one am looking forward to the even more absurd and chaotic genre of gender reveal parties this leads to.

"Where have you been all summer, Daniel?" "You don't look like you've been sleeping well..." This has been an exceptionally busy summer, but tomorrow it all comes to a climax. 1/7 #gravitationalWaves #LIGO #Virgo #KAGRA #GWTC4 #O4a #DataRelease 🔭

I have discovered that part of my car's door latch makes an ideal bottle opener, and I'd like to make clear I am not driving again today.

I briefly thought I'd found an actually good use of AI when I discovered it can read my handwritten notes, which other OCR generally struggles with. 1/2

One worries that if they put all their resources into making a bread giant that they might fail to make enough normal loaves.

Who are these people who allow their rivals to be long-standing?

I can't help but think that Geoffrey Hinton has never attempted to project manage a 3 year old...